Welcome to the Indonesia Against AIDS Website

Hello!My name is Ninette Murk, I live in Belgium where I founded Designers against AIDS (www.designersagainstaids.com) in 2004 and I love Bali, an island in Indonesia which I visited for the first time with my husband Peke in 2008, when we had a Balinese wedding ceremony in Kerobokan, in the garden of a friend. We love the island of the Gods because of the people who live there, the beautiful nature, the food and the spirituality.One thing that we don’t love is that HIV infections are on the rise in Bali as well as in other parts of Indonesia, which is why I decided to engage in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Indonesia with my NGO Designers against AIDS and why we’re organising our first HIV prevention workshops in May 2015 in Sanur as part of our new multi year project 'Asia Against AIDS- Back To Zero'. For 'Asia against AIDS' we will be creating dedicated social media platforms for young people, using elements from pop culture mixed with local culture to give them information about HIV/AIDS and safe sex. And the first country on our list is Indonesia.

We’ve created this website, where you can find information about HIV/AIDS, organisations in Indonesia and abroad where you can go for help or to get tested, in the F.A.Q. section there’s a possibility to ask us questions anonymously that will be answered by a professional and we also started a blog and a news section, for important news from both Indonesia and internationally. Keep checking in here regularly, as from May we will be updating a lot of new, cool stuff including videos by Indonesia's best music artists who speak out about the importance of safe sex and getting tested for HIV.

We want to fight the stigma that’s still associated with HIV/AIDS: if people are unlucky enough to get infected with the HIV virus, the last thing they need on top of that, is to be excluded by their family and friends! HIV is an infectious illness and not a curse and seropositive patients should be treated just like everybody else: with love and understanding. This way people won’t be shy anymore to get tested for HIV, which should be done as soon as possible after having unsafe sex, so that infected persons won’t go on to infect others as well. It’s not easy to be open about sexual matters, but in this case it can save lives, so let’s all do our best!

And remember: as long as there’s no cure for HIV and AIDS, prevention is the only way to protect yourself and your loved ones. We hope that together with you we can get this message out to as many young people in Indonesia as possible.

Together we can fight HIV/AIDS and make Indonesia even more beautiful!

Kindest regards,

Ninette

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